


Imperial Bedrooms

by hedda62



Category: Vorkosigan Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-09
Updated: 2011-09-09
Packaged: 2017-10-23 13:41:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/250915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hedda62/pseuds/hedda62
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Laisa and Gregor explore the Residence and each other. raising ghosts along the way.  (See warnings under Notes.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Imperial Bedrooms

**Author's Note:**

> This is the rare fic for me that started with the title (to which I have no real right considering I have neither read the Bret Easton Ellis novel nor listened to the Elvis Costello album straight through) and developed from there. Rating edges into mature, for plenty of generally non-explicit but suggestive sex; no non-con per se but... well, shall we just say "warning for Ges Vorrutyer." And hints of Prince Serg. Warnings also for shifting tone, occasional sentimentality, canonical heteronormativity, and eight-year-olds yelling "fuck."

The quest began one evening about a week after the end of their honeymoon, when Laisa took the wrong staircase.

Gregor, who had never really been off-duty, had since their return worked a series of long days in his office at Vorhartung Castle. She'd acquired an office of her own, tucked away in a corner on the ground floor of the Residence, which she set to organizing in a streamlined Komarran style, everything within easy reach. After that, she had enough space left in the room to host a dinner party, with dancing. Or that was what Alys Vorpatril said; Laisa suggested a conference table, and they compromised on a comfortable sitting area ideal for serving coffee, catching up on research, negotiating economic agreements, and indulging in what Alys called gossip and Laisa realized soon enough was a strategic gathering of essential political information.

This Empress thing was beginning to look like a job that might take months or years to understand fully, but for the moment no one was expecting much of Laisa beyond occasional appearances with or without Gregor at carefully-selected public events. He'd promised her real work, but training came first: Alys's social tutoring, hours of reading on the history and culture of her new home planet, tours of varied and marvelous Districts. And then there were ImpSec protocols to learn, on everything from how to walk safely between her front door and a groundcar, to how to evacuate via the roof if said front door was burning in a fire or broken down by hostile invaders. To Gregor, it was all as simple as breathing -- literally what he did to stay alive -- but she felt in a constant state of short-windedness, running full speed so she wouldn't fall behind.

In the midst of it all, though -- the confusion and the surprises and the unaccustomed deference combined with a feeling of being herded about -- there were joys, sweet bursts of sensory pleasure like trying on new and ever more absurdly Vor costumes, or meditatively tracing over the inlay in her hundred-year-old desk, or being casually offered spectacular views of mountains and lakes and plains as though they were nothing like a miracle. There were intellectual pleasures, too, mostly in finding connections: historical events linked to modern sensitivities; cultural puzzle pieces fitting together, making real and close what had seemed, in her schooldays, to be foreign and impenetrable. The greatest joy of all was Gregor; and if she couldn't spend her days with him, there were always the nights.

As she turned off her comconsole, slipped on her shoes, and left her office, her heart began to beat faster with anticipation. He'd had to work late tonight, right through dinner, so she had decided to do the same. Dinners on trays, in the Imperial Residence, were still pretty fancy, not to say filling. Just as well that the stairs were closer than the lift tube; she could stand the exercise. She'd wait for him in the bedroom... show off the new Komarran pajamas with Barrayaran-style embroidery... not actually _wear_ the pajamas...

Left, right, nod to the guard on duty, past the portrait of Emperor Dorca's horse and the enormous vases in niches, through the little alcove and up the back stairs she'd discovered that morning. Right at the top, left down a long hall... an unexpected dead-end, so she turned left again... more portraits, ladies with their hair piled high and full of flowers, men in uniform, a group of dark-haired Vorbarra children playing with a spinning top.

One of the boys in the painting, the eldest if heights could be believed, had a look of Gregor in his childhood vid-portraits: dreadfully serious and responsible and endearing. Laisa couldn't believe she hadn't noticed the resemblance before. In fact... had she even noticed the painting? Perhaps she'd been in too much of a hurry, but...

She cast a glance along the silent, high-ceilinged, dimly-lit hallway. Nothing in it looked particularly familiar, just vaguely appropriate: what she expected of an ancestral palace that was not really home yet despite Gregor's presence in it. Surely that little statue of a hunting dog was... no. The hall she'd come down this morning, had it had red-flocked wallpaper, or green? And wouldn't she have noticed the elaborate carving on the chair rails? The carpet was wrong, too... yes. She was lost.

 _Well,_ she chided herself, _that's why they wanted to assign you a servant to follow you around all day_. Advanced degrees and Komarran self-sufficiency were not about to help her find a way out of this maze; but she didn't need to trail retainers when she had technology on her side. Trying not to feel like a fool, she pressed the little audiocom-pin on her bolero.

"Yes, milady?" came an instant response.

"I'm afraid I've got myself turned around," she said lightly, "somewhere on the second floor. Can you, um, tell me where I am and how to get back to--"

"We'll send someone to you, milady. Just stay where you are."

"Oh, you really don't have to--"

"It's our job, and" -- the voice on the other end of the transmission went gentle and confidential -- "you're hardly the first person to get lost in the Residence. Someone will be with you soon. Security out."

Very well; she would wait. But while she was here, she might as well look around a little. Several doors opened off the hallway; differing heights and degrees of decoration probably indicated the size and importance of the rooms. She pushed open the tallest and most handsomely paneled one.

An antechamber, the sort an Armsman might once have slept in, protecting his master with the barrier of his body, led to another door that opened to a large bedroom. No light came on with her entry, but the sky outside was not yet completely dark, and her eyes adjusted quickly enough. The furniture was dark carved wood; the bed was stripped and the linens, she found on exploring, were piled in a cupboard. They needed airing, and the servants had skimped on the dusting as well. Wardrobe, dressing table; a cabinet next to the bed that still held, of all things, a chamber pot. The Residence had plumbing, but in this part of the building one must have had to share: one of those other doors off the hall. The space had the anonymous feel of a guest room, but no one had slept here in a long while.

Wondering if any artifacts of those ancient guests remained, she opened the door of the wardrobe. Movement from within startled her; she let out a tiny screech and then realized that she'd seen her own reflection in a mirror. Heart pounding, she glanced around the interior; it was empty, except for... a gleam, not from the mirror. From the floor of the wardrobe, she picked up a medallion on a faded ribbon.

Studying it in the dim light, she felt a breath of air stir the hair on the back of her neck; the floor creaked and she spun around with a gasp.

"Laisa. It's all right," said the voice of the dark shape at the door.

Calming, reassuring, very welcome... "Gregor!" She took a breath and went toward him. "So... you're the ImpSec man on the spot, hm?"

"I volunteered for the job. Considering whom I got to rescue," he said, hands on her shoulders, "it seemed worthwhile to go home the long way around." He kissed her. "How did you get over here?"

"I don't know... left instead of right. Or the reverse. I swear I was supposed to pass Dorca's horse."

"Ah. There are two of them."

"Two horses?"

"No, two portraits. It was a very important horse."

"I'll keep that in mind for next time. Where are we?"

"West wing. Haven't I taken you through here yet? We're above the Red Room. But we hardly ever use this section now. Small family... well, me. You, now. Not as many guests needing to stay overnight. What with lightflyers everyone just goes home after a party."

"It did all look a bit abandoned."

She hadn't mentioned "wasted space" but he grinned anyway. "Think we should rent them out?" The medal in her hand caught his eye. "What did you find?"

She showed him. "It's Cetagandan, I think. Is that possible?"

"Oh, very. We've had diplomats visit. Also secret collaborators, who probably wouldn't bring their medals with them. If it's really been that long since anyone cleaned in here, the Ceta high command did hold the Residence during the war. Here," he added, "finders keepers." He put the ribbon over her head so the medal hung on her breast.

"Hardly appropriate for me to wear!"

"Oh, I don't know. You've conquered the Barrayaran emperor; I'd think they would give you a medal for that. But if you wish..." He pulled it over her head and dropped it, then bent down and kissed the spot where it had lain. His mouth lingered, and then he straightened up and met her eyes. "I've been wanting you all day," he said. "Committee meetings, ministers' reports, all I could think of was you."

"I hope you weren't looking at the ministers like that."

He smiled and shook his head. "Do we get used to this? I hope so, or I'll be forced to abdicate" -- he didn't seem unhappy at the notion -- "and... we could just hide out in one of these bedrooms and make love all day long." A kiss to the hollow of her throat; a little run of them along her collarbone. "We could do it now," he said hopefully.

"But someone might--"

"Unlikely, but if they do" -- his mouth tickling her ear -- "if they dare, we tell them to take a wormhole jump to... oh hell. I forgot." He straightened up; touched his comlink. "Reporting, west wing," he said. "All is well."

"Profiterole located?"

"Yes. Safe. Gregor out." He cut the transmission. "There. They might have been worried. Now, where were we...?"

"Wait," she said, stilling his roving hands. "Profiterole?"

He had the grace to look embarrassed. "The Residence security chief is the grandson of a pastry chef. It's your code name. Truly, I had nothing to do with it, and why they chose it," he said, pushing down the edge of her already low-cut blouse and bending to address the uncovered flesh, "I have not the least idea."

"And what are you called? Éclair?" she asked, sliding her hands downward suggestively.

"Napoleon, I believe."

"Mm, and what are we invading today?"

"The same as yesterday, and tomorrow, and if you please every day the rest of my life... oh, _yes,_ " he hissed at her touch. "God, yes. Laisa, darling mine, bed. Now."

Stripping off clothes, they fell onto the bare mattress, which, it was immediately apparent, was stuffed with feathers and at least twenty years worth of dust. They sneezed, almost in unison. "Fuck," said Gregor, sneezed again, and started to laugh.

"What's so funny?" said Laisa, pulling him upright and dusting him off.

"I just suddenly remembered..." He brushed dust off her in return; the brushing turned to caresses. "Youthful reminiscence. We have better things to do than--"

"Yes, but..." -- she kissed him gently -- "tell me?"

"All right. I was about thirteen, which would make Miles eight, and somehow, it must have been his idea because I wouldn't have started it, corrupting youth not being my style I hope..." He paused, hands still trailing over her as he continued. "We embarked on a tour of the entire Residence, with the intent of visiting every room and... shouting out a bad word. 'Fuck' being one of the least original, though most-oft repeated; I think Miles had just discovered it. My vocabulary was a bit more advanced; altogether we used all the Barrayaran languages plus a few galactic ones."

Laisa didn't think she was so besotted that a confession from Gregor of torturing small animals would strike her as adorable, but this mental picture was... sort of irresistibly sweet, in a strange way. The visual contrast between the imagined figures, perhaps. Or Gregor all flustered at his younger cousin's impulse and initiative, something that apparently hadn't changed much over the years.

"Political commentary?" she asked. "Rebellion against the architectural form of the Imperium?"

Gregor shrugged. "Maybe. Rebellion against something, I'm sure." His attention shifted back to her fully; he began deliberately to unfasten her remaining clothes. "But never mind about that. I believe," he said with that intent gaze that stopped her breath every time, "I was about to make love to my wife. On the carpet if need be." He sank down, inviting her to join him. "Unless you'd rather walk the kilometer or so back to our room...?"

"No. I am just fine right here."

*

Afterwards, they lay entangled on the floor, too sated to move for the moment. She'd managed to remove all her clothes; Gregor was still wearing his socks, and for some reason had the Cetagandan medal's ribbon wrapped around one wrist. He sighed happily, said something in Russian that she suspected was highly indecent, and laughed again.

"Was that yours or Miles's?" she asked.

"Oh, very much mine," he said, rolling closer and kissing her. "I suppose we must have been in here that day, though I don't especially remember. He would have been thrilled to find this," he added, detaching the medal from his arm. "Though he's got one of his own now. Hm." Gregor nuzzled against her neck, mouth whispering against her skin. "I wonder if this is where... there's a story about a murder, during the war. Justified murder: a woman in the resistance movement knifed a Cetagandan general. Find any bloodstains?"

"No! And _now_ you tell me."

"I suspect it happened in the bed, so just as well for the dust." He traced a line down her nose and across her mouth. "We have all kinds of ghosts here; better get used to them."

"Maybe that's what all the bad-word shouting was about."

"Laying the ghosts? In a way." He sighed again, not so happily. "I was too young then to realize quite how angry I was about a lot of aspects of my life. I think Miles did know, about himself if not about me. Probably the difference between having fragile bones and... well, let's not get into that. We were kids; we had fun."

"And unlike most Barrayaran children" -- she'd been reading adventure stories, thinking to share something with him -- "you didn't even set fire to anything in the process." Gregor's expression tightened; she remembered too late that a good part of the Residence, now rebuilt and housing among much else their own bedroom suite, had burned down when he was five, on the day his mother had died. "Oh, I'm sorry, love. I didn't mean to--"

"It's all right. I much prefer this sort of burning," he said, hand smoothing over her hip. "You are my spark and my tinder and... incendiary, plasma flame, funeral pyre. Hearth. Everything that sets me alight. We just burned down the west wing too. I don't care; it can all go up in smoke."

"But I just finished fixing up my office," she said with a smile in her voice. "We could live there; it's big enough. My student apartment in Solstice wasn't--"

"It's not too big for you, is it?" he said. "The whole place, I mean. The whole... thing. Us." The Imperial Us, he clearly meant.

"No," she said. "Just a lot to explore. How many rooms _are_ there?"

"I'm not sure." He sounded a bit astonished, not to know. "We didn't count them, that day; we just--"

"Desecrated them?"

"Mm. I wonder" -- his gaze drifted away from her, seeing possibilities -- "I wonder how many bedrooms there are?" He pushed himself up on an elbow, met her eyes again, looking excited. "Let's make love in _all_ of them. Every single one."

"But that would take..." She did quick calculations with probable numbers: not really all that long, considering their mutual appetite. "Would doing it lay some ghosts too?"

"It might. We'll see. It would certainly be fun."

Gregor could use more fun in his life, she was sure of that. "Well, then," she said. "One down -- no, two down; we've done our own. Find a floor plan and let's count how many we have left."

*

 _"Olivia. Come to bed."_

 _She turned away from the swirling snow outside the window, her eyes dazzling in the dark. Piotr had put out the light, wishing for sleep; he was less drunk, and more mentally fatigued, than might have been expected considering the evening's festivities._

 _"It's a blizzard," he went on. "Completely natural. Father Frost's artillery barrage."_

 _"I know," she said. "I wasn't worried."_

 _"Nothing to worry about now." His tone didn't manage to be completely convincing. "Come to bed."_

 _She did, sliding under the covers with a practiced movement that let in as little cold air as possible; predictably, as she snuggled in close, he let out a grunt of complaint about her chilled feet, but he didn't mean it. It was such a luxury to both of them to share a bed, after the enforced separations the war had... it was more as though their marriage had punctuated the separations than the other way around, though she'd done her best to follow him, advances, retreats, camps and hideouts, until bearing children forced her to seek safer ground. She'd thought, for a time, that she would never see Vorbarr Sultana again._

 _"Boys settled in all right?" he asked._

 _"Yes. Aral fussed a little; the strange nursery. Very... empty-feeling. But they'll be fine. Home tomorrow."_

 _"If this snow lets up. Well, Dorca will lend us the sleigh to get across town," Piotr said with a laugh. He seemed to feel that he now had to laugh at horse-drawn conveyances; he'd really be happier in a world -- the world he was born in -- that offered no faster means of travel. He loved horses. Almost as much as he loved her._

 _"He looked tired tonight," she said, meaning her grandfather._

 _"He's old," Piotr said. "Worn out. Just wants to die in his own bed. And he can."_

 _"Thanks to you."_

 _"And your father. All of us. Yes, dammit, we've got this far. Dying in my own bed at a ripe old age, there's an ambition I can live with."_

 _"In our own bed," she corrected, kissing his shoulder. A strongly muscled shoulder, like the rest of him: he looked splendid in his skin, though older than he should at his age. Worn out; used up. She wanted to feed him back to health, to youth._

 _And she knew it wasn't over yet; he was worried about Yuri. And right to be: she'd always known to be careful around her uncle. But a clean succession was worth much in the current climate; they'd deal with the consequences as they occurred._

 _"All will be well," she said._

 _Piotr laughed, a tickle against her hair. "Royal pronouncement, Princess?"_

 _"Just my own intuition. Or the Countess reassuring her Count, if you insist on rank. My mother says these are the last days of the Vor class. Of course, she's been saying that since she arrived on Barrayar." Piotr snorted gently, but that was all; he must be getting sleepy. "All will be well," she repeated._

 _Sleet prickled on the windows, as they drifted into slumber together._

*

Laisa and Gregor decided early on that their ritual anointing of every bedroom would not include those currently occupied by servants; that seemed both inconvenient and disrespectful. Those small chambers eliminated, the rest numbered forty-two, which was a reasonable number in the context of their quest, if not, Laisa privately thought, in any other context whatsoever.

Certain practicalities had to be observed. Laisa managed to gain access to the head housekeeper's data files and calendar program, which provided a master plan for guest assignments (she was not always aware herself of who was billeted in the Residence when) and cleaning schedules; as a result, they had very few unpleasant surprises. They procured a couple of thick quilts that served as bedding where needed, as sex on the floor lost its charm quickly. She tried not to think of all the others who'd occupied the beds: coupling, being born, dying, or simply trying to sleep.

After they'd done the deed each time, they stirred themselves to return to their own room. This was, as Gregor explained, a kindness to ImpSec. Who apparently knew, in its multi-personed being, exactly what they were up to, as their locations were trackable throughout the Residence; she tried not to think of that either.

It was not going to be over in forty-two days; they didn't have the stamina for that (though, with all the indoor hiking, Laisa's legs felt as toned as... other parts of her), nor did they want to rush through the game. "We'll knock off three or four a week," Gregor said one day early in the program, "and not neglect our room. It might get jealous."

"Or greedy," she said, trying for a quelling tone and not succeeding. "What's on for tonight?"

Gregor pointed to a modest chamber on the third floor of the south wing. They were proceeding according to a logic invisible to Laisa but apparently obvious to him; it was his house, after all. Though increasingly hers, she felt; not a bad way to get to know your surroundings. And your husband.

"Well," she said, "it's a date. Have a good day at the office, dear."

*

 _Bothari closed the door of the tiny, austere room behind him, and let out a long breath. He stripped off his uniform jacket, hanging it neatly on its peg: the first step in separating himself from the day's work. Then he splashed cold water on his face, and activated the heating element to boil water for his tea. The same tea, every night: a blend of suspect leaves that his mother had favored, mostly because it was dirt cheap. He'd come to rely on it for sleep._

 _It was a gift, this sleep. This hard bed, long enough for his legs to stretch out straight; a room to be alone in. A room in the Imperial Residence: he never thought that. It was where the Vorkosigans lived, for now, and he served the Vorkosigans. He had offered -- it was what an Armsman should offer -- to sleep across the threshold of Lord Miles's chamber, but Lady Vorkosigan would not hear of it. "You guard him all day," she'd said, "and you need to be well-rested." Not that the young lord needed much following about, though they said he would walk soon enough. He talked; that was what tired Bothari out. He needed this time, his evening ritual, to clear the words out of his mind._

 _The little room was warm, and the tea would make him warmer. He took off his shoes, shirt and trousers, and sat in his underthings drinking his tea. Lady Vorkosigan, on the one occasion she'd visited his room -- she seemed to understand, afterwards, that he would rather she didn't come again -- had glanced around, noted the lack of a wardrobe, and asked if he had any other clothes besides his Armsman's uniforms. He'd just said, "Yes, milady," and left it at that. They gave him a day off each week, and where he usually went then he didn't like to wear the House's uniform; it was disrespect. He didn't need much, otherwise. They were good at laundry here in the Residence; at first he hadn't been sure, but he always got back the shirts and underclothes he put outside his door, his own and not someone else's by mistake, clean and neatly pressed, and the uniforms he cared for himself._

 _The tea and the quiet worked their magic, and his mind stilled. Only a few words left. He pissed in the pot he kept in the corner -- he didn't like to go down the hall until morning -- and then sat on his bed looking at the pictures._

 _First, there was the holocube of his daughter: laughing, growing, being well cared-for. Once a month he used his day off to see her; she'd run to him, smiling, chattering, wanting to be petted. He always made sure to ask if she'd been good, though he didn't know what he'd do if she said no. Not like he could raise a hand to her, ever._

 _The other picture, he'd hired a real artist to make; it wasn't like he had any vids of her, but he had those flashes of memory, enough to turn into words the artist could draw from. It had hurt, and the result was nothing like perfect, but it was enough. That lovely face; that dark hair; he still knew how she smelled, what her skin felt like. He looked at her each night, didn't say much but her name, not like the long prayers some of the men he'd served with had addressed to their precious icons. He just looked; tried not to remember too hard; never touched himself then though sometimes he felt like it. There were whores, on the days off, for that._

 _And then he put the light out and went to bed, and said the name one more time, never sure which of his beloveds he was naming._

 _"Elena."_

*

The night of the day the embryo of their little Crown Prince was safely transferred to his replicator, Gregor led her to a room at the end of the north wing, locked the door, and made love to her with a passionate intensity that robbed her of breath and speech and would have frightened her if she'd had the wit left to be frightened. He looked, as he fought his way toward his orgasm, as though everything that was Gregor in him had vanished, and then he gripped onto her so tightly that she couldn't see his face, but after a moment when she had no words at all, some came to her: _he looks like the Emperor._

And then he let her go, and rolled over on his back, and said, "Oh, Laisa," in his own voice, and whatever it was she'd given him, she was glad of it once again.

"Do you know where we are?" he said after a minute.

"No, do you?" But she knew he meant place, not state of being. She looked around, trying to assess the room with the eyes of an Empress. Fairly unimpressive, reserved for guests of the less important sort (Komarrans, for example), though possessing all the basic amenities and not shaming the hospitality of the Imperium. "Tell me."

"We're in the wing that was rebuilt after the fire. You knew that. Ever look at the old floor plan to compare?" She shook her head. "This is approximately where the Emperor's suite used to be. My grandfather's rooms. My mother and I slept here too, after he died."

"Oh. And our rooms are down the hall now because...?"

"Security reasons, officially. Easier to evacuate. But that's not why. I'm pretty sure the redesign was Cordelia's doing; she knew I'd never want to sleep here again, in the same space. My grandfather died here. So did Count Vordarian, for that matter. I made her tell me. My mother... well, it wasn't where our rooms are now."

 _And if you know where, you're not going to burden me with that knowledge._ "Gregor, love," she said. "You would be annoyed if I offered you pity. Mm?" He closed his eyes, nodded. "I don't think I can offer you understanding. Though you can keep trying to pound it into me. No," she hastened to reassure him as his face tensed, "it was... you didn't hurt me." He lay completely still, but his spirit seemed to be turning away and rolling up into a tight little ball. "You felt me respond. You know what you made me feel."

"Made you," Gregor echoed. "Forced you."

"Dearest, if you think that was rape, you've never come anywhere close to it."

"No," he said dully, "that's not what I thought."

"I wanted to be here. With you. I still do. Just... I can't be in the same _here_ that you are."

"I know," he said, "that's why I... damn. I think I was trying to use you to... purify it. This place. As if the fire hadn't done it already."

"Not in your mind, apparently."

"Then it was unfair to shut you up in my mind, and--"

"Set me on fire?" His lip twitched, as if he couldn't help knowing what she meant. "You're equally annoyed at compliments, I realize, but let me try; the Empress is always equal to the situation, even if she's using unaccustomed vocabulary." She sat up, leaned over him; he took in the view without reacting. "Your Imperial Majesty," she pronounced, "is one hell of a fuck. I would shout that, but I think I'm too exhausted."

He lifted an eyebrow, as if any response more demonstrative was too much effort, and then he grinned and pulled her down for a kiss. "Thank you," he said.

"You are very welcome," she told him.

*

 _Aral strained against his bonds, trying to squeeze his hands small enough to force them through the loops on his wrists, but it was no use. They were both good at knots: part of their training. The rope tying him to the post behind his head was rough, fibrous; it would leave marks. He wanted it to. The silken curtains in the windows, the hangings on the bed, the fabric of the settee he lay on, mocked at him; he should mock them back. Mocking, and leaving marks, was what this was all about._

 _"Get on with it," he gritted out from between his teeth._

 _"Patience, love," said Ges. He'd taken off his shirt, but nothing else; he leaned over Aral now, the smooth muscle of his chest and arms taunting Aral's impotent touch. Aral flicked out his tongue; it wasn't as if Ges couldn't tell how he was feeling. "Later," Ges chided. "We have time. No one will disturb us."_

 _He played with his knife a little; perhaps it was meant to be threatening._ No one will hear you scream. _"If you really want to fuck with Ezar," Aral said, "on my behalf, I assume, since by blood" -- he emphasized the words -- "I have a better right to it than you do--"_

 _"As if you could help being born," Ges said._ As if I could help surviving. __

 _"Then we should be in his bedroom. Haven't got the guts for that, have you?"_

 _"There's always next week. How about enjoying the here and now? And I can see you are." He ran a hand lightly down Aral's naked side, resting his fingers on the hipbone. "God, you're beautiful. I could look at you for hours."_

 _Aral gave one galvanic jerk against the ropes, then relinquished the fight. It wasn't as though he hadn't let Ges do this to him._ This, _in the broad sense. He wanted to pull the post loose, pull the ceiling down on both of them. He wanted to be free, so he could wrestle Ges to the floor, fuck him or kill him, or both. He wanted a drink, to drown himself. He was nothing but wanting. That, he'd done to himself._

 _"Get on with it," he repeated. Ges lifted an eyebrow. "Dammit, I am not going to beg you!"_

 _"Shh, my love," breathed Ges, "no need for that," and unsheathed the knife._

 _No pain as the blood flowed along his breastbone, down his ribs and onto the green silk of the settee; just the urging of pleasure as a strong hand took pity on his yearning and began to stroke him, hard and then harder; he came and woke in the same second, gasping his way into consciousness and opening his eyes to Cordelia's sardonic gaze._

 _"Shh, love," she said, a horrible echo, and then, more horribly still, "Was it Ges?"_

 _At least his hands weren't still tied. He put them over his face, and nodded. Through the lattice of his fingers he watched her lift her hand from his crotch and wipe it on the sheet. "You are not responsible for dream-phantoms," she said. "Or dream-lovers, for that matter."_

 _"It wasn't a dream. I mean, it was, but... a memory of something that really happened. Here. At the Residence. Not in this room." He drew his hands down his cheeks, nails digging in, and laughed hollowly. "The room's gone now, that it happened in. Burned."_

 _"Mm. My doing, I suppose."_

 _"Avenging fiery angel. Dear Captain. You and Bothari, I suppose. My ghost-vanquishers."_

 _"Ghosts take a lot of time to vanquish. Obviously." She gestured at his faded erection, paused, then said, "Gregor--"_

 _He made a noise of protest; she raised an eyebrow, looking uncannily like his dream-Ges. "This is the 'we don't mention sex and children in the same five minutes' rule?"_

 _"Not_ that _child."_

 _She caught his meaning. "Conceptions do not define children. Think how uncomplicatedly joyful Miles would be. But life experiences do have their impact, and Gregor has nightmares. Seven years on. About things he never saw. Fire, beheadings, nerve disruptors."_

 __So do I. _"Are you about to suggest Betan therapy?"_

 _"I'm not sure it would do any good, honestly. Betans do not deal well with ghosts. Not that Barrayarans are any better. This school he's going to, will they try to beat his nerves out of him?"_

 _"No. Their notion of therapy will be to tell him 'stand up strong, be a man,' but that is, after all, what he will have to do, or else go mad, so to my mind there's no harm in telling him so. Someone will, along the way, listen to him. If he will talk."_

 _"Do the boys form... special friendships?"_

 _"Is that an atypical bit of weasel-wording, Cordelia? You mean, do they go off in corners and jerk each other off? Sometimes, yes. I wouldn't necessarily recommend it," he added dryly._

 _"Not everyone searching for love finds it the way Ges did," she said. "Or corrupts it. Fails to corrupt it, in your case."_

 _"Then why do I still want him?" Aral breathed out. And, before she could speak, answered his own weak, childish question. "Because I failed to save him. As you have saved me." He kissed her hand, the one that smelled of him. "But I think we'd be better off with an Emperor who yearns toward women. Practically speaking."_

 _"Yes," said Cordelia, "and considering that, he is twelve now, and on Beta we--"_

 _Aral stuck his head under the pillow._

*

Inevitably, their vigor in pursuing the quest waned as time went on. Not, Laisa thought, due to any lingering repercussions from their time in Ezar's ghostly abode; they'd checked a few more rooms off the list in the weeks following, but then they had a state visit to Sergyar and a rush of events at home in the build-up to Winterfair, and secret quests lost urgency in the face of their real work. And they had a son, growing in his replicator, to absorb what bits of obsessive energy were left. It was like the days of their courtship over again; they both went remarkably stupid in his presence, full of mooncalf expressions of love and hope and devotion.

Laisa did wonder sometimes what it would be like -- whether it would be in indefinable ways _better_ \-- to be carrying the fetus in her own womb, in Barrayaran and in fact ancient human tradition. If all went well, their son would someday be the first Emperor of Barrayar to be born from a replicator, and Gregor would be the last not to be. In all practical senses, it was past time for that change, but some sentiment attached to the thought of Gregor's mother trundling around a swollen belly full of _him_ , at least when Laisa didn't think about it too closely. She knew enough about what Princess Kareen had gone through with Prince Serg to be sure that Kareen would have latched onto the idea of replicators with both hands and her teeth.

By the day of Miles and Ekaterin's wedding, it had been over a month since they'd visited any bedroom but their own, but that night Gregor whisked her and a bottle of vintage wine off to a spacious chamber in one of the towers, with views all around. They drank private toasts to their own and others' happiness, laughed and for brief moments cried, and caressed each other lingeringly, building up to an explosion of pleasure that Laisa felt must have lit up the whole city, fireworks visible to their friends at Vorkosigan Surleau and sensed as far as Komarr. The next day, she felt rather hung over and had to restrain herself from snapping at mundane petitioners, but it had been worth it. And they'd been reminded to pick up their pace; there were still lots of rooms left unvisited.

*

 _Reality twinned itself in Simon's vision as he walked down the hall. He'd once tried to explain it to Aral, one of the few who honestly wanted to know, as akin to relaxing the muscles of your eyes and letting them cross, so that you saw double. Aral had nodded, as if he understood, but he really couldn't have; it wasn't about eyes, not really. If Simon relaxed into the double-sensing deeply enough, it doubled again, as though he saw both the past and the present with both his eyes and his chip: a third-floor bedroom corridor in the south wing of the Residence, clean but a bit uncared-for in the Vorkosigan Regency, the same hall with newer carpet in Ezar's day. Before he came abreast of a portrait of Dorca's second wife's brother-in-law, he could see it clearly in the chip's memory, knew that in the foreground a chessboard would show the white king one move away from check, a political statement that Negri had pointed out to him thirteen years ago, and in the background would rise a haze of vegetation that a crosscheck of field guides told him was knifegrass and wild irises._

 _He reached the portrait, which was hanging perfectly straight, and remembered Negri straightening it the day they'd passed it -- that was his own memory as well as the chip's; he'd been struck by the obsessive tidiness of the act -- and, again with both memories, he remembered why they had been in this corridor, everything he'd seen and every word they'd said. People like Aral, like everyone except him, had memories -- aches, regrets, ghosts of the past -- but he had vids in his head, and the vids tried hard to crowd out the flashes of organic connection, the nerves and synapses linked only by the firing of real emotion. And never could, entirely. There'd been fear, that day, and pride, and something that could only be called hope in retrospect, but he did call it that; the chip never would._

 _He paused outside the door of the room, in the spot where he'd stood for hours that day; he'd never ventured inside. Perhaps he would now; he had the right. Nothing was above or below the notice of the Chief of Imperial Security; he'd looked into pretty much every room in this building at some time in his career, so why not this one?_

 _As he entered, his eyes were drawn to the bed, so with their vision he did not at first notice the figure by the window, but the chip saw, alerting him with a word of alarm in their shared private language. He turned, and she did, at the same instant. Dark hair; white skin; poised, elegant in gray silk. Sad._

 _"Lady Alys," he said, recovering before his heart had done more than speed a few beats. And then -- the dread Captain Illyan notwithstanding -- he fumbled his next few words, an apology for intruding that declined to include, but was confused by, inquiry about her presence. It was the chip, showing an unusual lack of literalism, that informed him he had thought for half a second that she was Kareen._

 _"I have no more business here than you," she said, implying that nevertheless either of them could invent any business in the Residence that they pleased. "I like the view from this window," she added._

 _It seemed an invitation he might accept, so he joined her and looked out. A glimpse of the river, a haze of rain in the air, the yellow of autumn trees in the park. Pleasant, if gloomy considering the weather, but not spectacular. He turned back, asking for but not expecting an explanation._

 _"Padma and I were given this room once to sleep in," she said. "We spent most of the night sitting by this window, not sleeping. I let him drift off in his chair for a while, toward dawn; there didn't seem much to worry about, then." She paused, perhaps waiting for Simon to say something. "We stayed the night at Serg's express order. Thank heaven, we didn't rate a visit. Or perhaps he fell asleep, or Count Vorpatril's Armsman in the hall was enough of a deterrent. He had orders not to risk his life or his master's loyalty, but he did possess a very stern expression."_

 _"Was it you or your husband that was the, er--"_

 _"Target? Hard to tell, with Serg. But he'd always had a..._ tendresse _for Padma, if you can call it that. And he would happily have seen him dead, of course, especially if he'd already managed to take out Aral. We got through_ that _night, at least."_

 _"Hm," said Simon. There wasn't much to say, except, "I'm sorry."_

 _"It was a good while ago now." She laughed a little. "Melancholy, product of leisure. The days after the Emperor's Birthday, when I have time to breathe again, always bring it out in me."_

 _"Was that when this happened?" Simon said, more sharply than he'd intended._

 _"No, it was summer," she said. "Light long into the evening. Why?"_

 _"Thirteen years ago. The night Gregor was born. I was here. In the hall, like your Armsman I suppose." Although his orders had included self-sacrifice if necessary. "Guarding Kareen."_

 _"But she... you mean_ this _is where she gave birth? Not in her own--"_

 _"Not in Serg's room, no. We thought we'd kept him away -- off-planet, even -- but he had his spies, and they all could count days, and the birth was late in any case." A wisp of a smile from Lady Alys; Simon had not recorded the similar lateness of Ivan's birth in his own memory, but the chip remembered for him. "Negri had guards on rooms throughout the Residence, and a trained cadre of ImpSec staff imitating labor cries. Some of them were women." Alys chuckled, though her face still looked dreadfully strained. "In the end, Serg arrived only when it was nearly over, close to dead drunk, and collapsed in his bed weeping. No search; no confrontation."_

 _"And you stood faithfully in the corridor... and heard the first cries of little Prince Gregor?"_

 _"Yes." That was not a memory any part of him would ever forget. "But I'm afraid... inevitably Serg found out what we'd done, and he did turn up here the next day. He was... as well-behaved as he ever managed. It was his right, to see his son."_

 _"Hmph," said Alys, a small noise as she turned back to the window. "Padma never saw his."_

 _"I suspect this room had... special significance to Serg, after that. I'm sorry," Simon repeated._

 _She waved a hand. "All over," she said. "Nothing happened."_

 _He was visited then by a wholly unreasonable desire to take her into his arms and provide some form of comfort; he thought she might not find it unwelcome, but clearly they would both be embarrassed by it later, and embarrassment was an emotion with enough practical consequence that he seldom forgot it. He would have flung himself into needler fire, for Kareen, but some situations were straightforward and some... uncertain. Instead, he took refuge in analysis._

 _"I have often thought," he said, "that Serg knew with some instinctual part of himself just what he might be bequeathing to any offspring, and wanted desperately to... refuse the honor. Unfortunately, he couldn't do that, but he tried again and again to sabotage the process, at every stage; if it wasn't for Ezar and Negri, he might have succeeded. It was brutal for Kareen, absolutely damned brutal--"_

 _His voice cracked a little, and Alys put a hand to his shoulder. "I know," she said. "Not the easiest job, being a witness to history, is it?" She turned him to the view, again. "We all need something to rest our eyes on, now and then. The ghosts fade a little faster that way."_

 _He glanced away from the rain and the trees, toward what he wanted to rest his eyes on, and caught her glancing at him too; his heart speeded a bit, and then thumped into full alert at the sound of running footsteps in the hall. Not one -- or rather two -- of his men; his comlink was on and they would have alerted him first. Not enemies either, for the same reason; but instinct and double memory made a lie of that assurance, and before he knew what he was doing he had grabbed Alys, pushed her toward and into the closet the chip had spotted on entering the room, and snicked the door closed silently, hiding with her in the dark._

 _The footsteps stopped outside the room, just as Simon's chip analyzed the pattern made by one set of them and identified their owner. It took another second or two for the relief to relax his taut muscles, and by then he'd recognized Miles's laugh, an eight-year-old laugh cross-referenced with laughs from his entire young history, and indexed to whimpers of pain._

 _"Fuck!" he yelled out, an angry word full of joy and mischief. "Fuckity fuck fuck! Now you, Gregor," and Alys gripped Simon's arm as the breaking adolescent voice of their Emperor let out a fluent and rather literary obscenity in Barrayaran French; the chip identified the source before Simon could stop it, and he had to stamp firmly on the memory to keep its pages from opening further. Clearly certain portions of Dorca's library ought to have been locked up some time back._

 _The footsteps retreated; they heard the performance repeated with variations across the hall and in the room next door, and then the boys turned a corner and Simon let out a breath that turned into laughter, and he and Alys were by-God giggling together and holding hands; more of the French verse flickered into Simon's conscious mind and nearly onto his tongue before it hit him that he was in a closet, in the dark, with Lady Alys Vorpatril, and that he could hardly have picked a place on the planet where it was less appropriate for him to be. Even if the Chief of Imperial Security could be anywhere and no one would dare question him._

 _"I think we should--" he began, and paused for an instant as his brain, all its parts working together, supplied a list of things she might just possibly think they should do, propriety and ghosts and his chip be damned, and then he finished, "--be going now."_

 _"Yes," she said, with a hint of regret like the rain and the fallen leaves, "we certainly should."_

*

Life for the Vorbarras continued busy, and despite their best attempts it was nearly Midsummer before they'd checked off all the bedrooms but one. Long before then, Laisa had known why Gregor was leaving that one till last. She'd taken his hint and sought out floor plans from the generations prior to their own, labeled with the rooms' royal occupants, and quickly enough picked out the suite on the second floor, south wing, that Serg Vorbarra had occupied for most of his life, both before and during his marriage. Those rooms, unfortunately, had not burned; they were well-proportioned, conveniently located, and handsomely decorated, and were often used to accommodate important guests, although, Laisa noted on study of the housekeeper's records, not any who would have been been visitors in Serg's day.

They had just knocked off a little unoccupied maid's room at the end of the west wing. Laisa opened the floor plan file when they returned to their room, checked it off, and took a quick glance through to be sure she was right about their near-completed quest. Gregor was already in bed. "So, one more," she said. He didn't respond, and she decided to leave it, but he was awake hours into the night, turning from side to side, sighing.

"One more," she repeated the next evening when they had retired to their room.

"Mm."

"Is that 'not tonight, dear, I'm not in the mood,' or 'I don't want to talk about it'?"

He looked over at her, surprised. "What do you mean?" he said.

For answer, she called up the old floor plan on the comconsole and pointed to Serg's name, then overlaid their modern plan with all the bedrooms but one colored in. "Mm," said Gregor again.

"We don't have to," she said.

"We do bloody well have to," he said tightly.

"No. We don't. I would understand, and so would anyone else you talked to about this. You don't want to think about what happened in that room. Neither do I, frankly."

"Then we don't think," he said. "There are ways."

"I don't care to drink that much, or take that many drugs, and it would spoil the end of our adventure. Let's go back to the tower room tonight; no harm in doing that twice instead."

"No. That's not... there are rules to this. I know," he said, looking more like himself as he shook his head, "we never made any, and no one is holding us to them, and it's all a silly game we invented--"

"It hasn't been silly. It's been--" She had no words to describe what it had been, but Gregor came to her and kissed her, and that did for words.

"I have to finish it," he said. "Or it'll be hanging over me. Forever. Every time we make love, I'll think 'but we never...' and that, _that_ will spoil it. I should have known, from the beginning, when I made the suggestion. My father, putting out a dead hand from beyond the grave, if he had a grave, or hands." Gregor looked at his own hands, as if wondering what they might do at his father's will.

"Then now," she said. "Let's go. Before you think about it anymore."

They took nothing with them; the bed would be made up for the next set of guests, and Laisa had left enough mysterious stains throughout the Residence by now to not care about ordering new sheets put on. She'd purposefully donned her Komarran pajamas; her breasts showed to good advantage in the low-buttoned top and her hair bounced loose around her shoulders: she looked as unlike the portraits of Kareen as she could manage. Gregor, still in half the day's formal attire, dark hair untidy, a surly expression on his face, resembled his father more than was comfortable.

It was a relatively short walk by Residence standards; they were there sooner than perhaps either of them wanted to be. After staring at the door for a good thirty seconds, Gregor finally opened it and let them inside, closed it behind them, and hovered his hand over the lock for a moment before leaving it undone. Then he looked at her, solemn and uncertain.

"I love you very much," she said. "I hope that helps."

"Yes," he said, gave a helpless sigh, and kissed her.

She had prepared herself to again be carried along as Gregor overwhelmed them both with mindless passion, but, perhaps afraid he'd hurt her accidentally or (more devastatingly) on purpose, he instead kept himself under a control that pained her to watch. He was gentle, considerate of her comfort, heartbreakingly grateful for her attentions to the needs he allowed himself to manifest, and formulaic if thorough in his attentions to her. It worked; it was far from the best they'd been with each other, but they both got physical satisfaction out of it, no one swung a fist or fell apart in tears, and when it was done he gave a sigh of profound relief, whispered, "Yours, till time makes an end of me," and in a few moments was asleep.

They slept all night in the bed, ImpSec's headaches be damned, and in the morning she felt confident enough to tease him with the suggestion that these rooms were even nicer than their own and perhaps they should--

" _No,_ " said Gregor. "But," he amended, "we could visit now and then."

"Not as haunted as you anticipated?" she said quietly.

He shook his head. "Not that," he said. "But perhaps I am more at ease with ghosts."

*

 _Vidal sighed happily, rolled off her, and was snoring within minutes. He shifted in his sleep as Kareen curled away from him, and an arm fell heavily across her body. She might have removed it without disturbing him -- tyranny, she thought with painful sarcasm, was wearying work, and he would sleep hard -- but it didn't matter. He might as well, and perhaps he should, demonstrate his possession of her even while unconscious. In his way, he actually loved her; it was not a love that most people would recognize as such, but then he considered his tyranny to be justice, and worse justice had been done on Barrayar in days past._

 __Emperor Vidal. _She shuddered a bit in retrospective disgust; she'd pretended to enjoy it as he lay on her pumping in his seed, because he seemed to need her to, and she must get used to doing his will. If only she did not have to bear his child; though it was nearly inevitable if things went on this way. But he was a far better fate than Emperor Serg would have been, for her and for Barrayar. It was not disgust she felt when remembering Serg; it was hate and terror. Disgust, she could live with. Though Serg, at least, had given her Gregor._

 __No. _She would not think of Gregor._

 _By association, her thoughts traveled to the thing humming in the cupboard: Cordelia's child, nurtured by a machine, though if she understood Vidal correctly, the food in it would soon turn to gall and the child become lifeless. Well, let it; Cordelia had failed her; Aral Vorkosigan had failed her; she had nothing left but the hard arm over her nakedness, and... perhaps already the seed working inside her, creating another child. She would nurture it with her own body, if that was her fate. Vidal's child might be a delight; miracles had happened; Serg had given her Gregor, and..._

 _And Vidal had taken him away. No, she told herself hastily, that was unfair;_ Negri _had taken him away. Damn Negri to whatever hell had swallowed him, at the bottom of that lake. Her boy, the pale little face, the hair floating in the greenness... they'd told her he would not have drowned; would have already been dead as the flyer hit the water. They might have lied. Any of it could be lies; she could still hope; until they showed her Gregor's body there was still..._

 _No. Hope was drowned. Hope was borne down by heaviness, and justice, and love, and it would not rise to the surface._

 _She slept, and dreamed of her son as a man, tall and splendid and brave; and no whispers in the night disturbed her._

*

The night before their first son was born, Gregor and Laisa slept together in the nursery that was ready for him. They did not make love -- it had been made, sufficiently, already -- but just held each other and talked of what they hoped for. Anything was fair game: their son would have a dimple in his chin, but not be given an embarrassing pastry-related code name by ImpSec; their son would beat Miles's children at Strat-O; their son would make peace for all time with the Cetagandans. They knew he would have troubles; they knew he would, at some point, resent them for giving him life and the unbearable fate that he would have to bear; they knew he would make his own ghosts and inherit some of theirs.

They hoped, since he would have reason at times to curse the world, that he would gain an elegant vocabulary with which to do so. But mostly they hoped that he might find love, and that it might bring him happiness.

"Against the odds," said Gregor. "But miracles have happened before."


End file.
